Fining public sector organisations, conning then fining the public

Its being reported that the BBC is being fined £150k over the antics of messers Brand and Ross.

Well that's all right then, justice has been handed out by Ofcom, all is well !

Only hang on a minute, who pays the £150k again ? Is it not money from the TV poll tax ?

Not long ago a man mistreated in police custody was awarded £60k in compensation, and guess who's paying that money ? Yes its you and me though our taxes.

Hospitals kill people by neglect by the equivalent of the plane load, and they get threatened with - wait for it - fines. That leaves two possibilities - one - we pay through our taxes, or two we pay by having less health care available.

It seems to me that fines of public sector oranisations are a farce designed to protect the staff who work for them at the cost of the tax payer - who has the double insult of being deceived and having to pay for it.

What I would like to see is these fines coming out of the salaries and pensions of those responsible, not my back pocket.

So if half the civil service deserve the sack - where are the efficiency savings Gordon ?

Lord Digby Jones is reported by the BBC with the following extract:

Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones says he was "amazed" to discover how many civil servants "deserved the sack".

This is Civil Serf's point, until she was silenced.

Lord Digby Jones suggests that better results could come from half the amount of staff!

Now given the high salaries and gold plated pensions that many of us are going to die in poverty paying for, this is just point blank not acceptable.

In my personal experience of the state sector what I've found is good people, but a lack of responsibility or urgency or ownership of problems.

I have worked on a contract for a government quango - which was frustrating as they just didn't understand what was involved in a fixed price piece of work. And it got worse when I spoke to the then DTI. ( Such problems almost never occurred when dealing with other private sector organisations. )

This just goes to back up what Iain Dale and others have been saying about the lack of business experience in ministers. The problem is that they accept this bad performance.

Lets be clear the public is being cheated out of its taxes because the current ( and maybe previous governments ) lack the experience to know that the service the civil services provides is sub standard and ineffective.

We are entitled to ask where the efficiency savings are that Gordon Brown claimed he was going to make - to try to defuse Conservative proposals.

Its a scandal. Remember the protests when the Conservatives suggested there should be a reduction in civil servants in 2004 ?

See also previous post "How good is the civil service ?"
And the report in the Telegraph on the same subject, which has more of Lord Jones' views.

The malaise in the public sector

Iain Dale was calling for Ms Shoesmith to get the chop ( which in fact she has ).

But I want to suggest that there is a more general problem with public services ( health, education, social services, and I'm afraid defence also ).

Below is the comment (with some of my dire spelling corrected) I left on Iain Dales blog.

This shows a sign of a more serious and general public sector malaise.

The role of leadership and judgement has been replaced with quality management ideas - which keep people very busy filling forms and finding 'evidence'. This approach is used to pass down 'targets' and direct inspections of various public service functions.

I wonder if this isn't why Ms Shoesmith used graphs to show why her department performed well ( despite the body of a young child to prove otherwise ), their inspection report was three star and all those heads wrote in to support her.

Personal responsibility ( especially on public sector employers on such fantastic salaries ) is good.

But I'm afraid this will change nothing.

It might sound rather academic and abstract, but the Conservative party needs to get to grip with these ideas if it is ever to reform the public services.

Update: Burning our Money's Wat Tyler ain't too impressed either.